National Security - Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy

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Circumspect Foreign Policy: Washington and Eisenhower’s Farewell Addresses

January 17, 2024

While Washington famously urges America in his 1796 Farewell Address to focus on preserving union at home for the “permanency of [its] felicity as a people,” Eisenhower in his 1961 Farewell Address identifies extensive foreign involvement as a necessity to preserve peace and “enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among people and among nations.” These two presidents seem to offer very different visions of American foreign policy’s basic purposes. Can the principles of the two speeches admit reconciliation?

Clausewitz’s “Artikel” on Art: An Introduction

Olivia Garard

September 27, 2023

“On Art and the Theory of Art” is a rigorous investigation exploring the differences between art and science; the possibility of art theory; the necessity of practice and talent; the possibility of any laws or rules of art; and the difficulty of exceptions to these rules or laws, among other topics. It is a deep meditation on the relationship between purposes (Zweck) and means (Mittel), which is also the title of On War Book One, chapter two. Art requires judgment, one of the most important mental capabilities of the commander, while science—in the broad 19th century philosophical sense—requires cognition.

Fusing Politics and Scientific Innovation: Vannevar Bush’s “Modern Arms and Free Men”

Peter Campbell

August 23, 2023

In the aftermath of the Second World War, engineer and chief science advisor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt Vannevar Bush wrote "Modern Arms and Free Men: A Discussion of the Role of Science in Preserving Democracy." World War II had been marked by incredible technological innovations that changed the course of the war, culminating in the atom bomb. The lessons of that war, Bush hoped, would help chart a course for the United States through its new confrontation with its ally-turned-adversary, the Soviet Union.

Kaiser Wilhelm II points out an event of interest to the British Junior Minister at the Colonial Office, Winston Churchill, during the summer manoeuvres of the Imperial German Army in 1906.

“Unvarying Courtesy” or “Unbending Determination”? The 1907 Eyre Crowe Memorandum and the Dilemmas of Strategic Forecasting

Eric Fleury

March 02, 2022

Two general schools of thought regarding Crowe and his famous Memorandum have emerged. Some scholars paint Crowe as a latter-day Cassandra who foresaw the structural trends that were hurling the two powers toward confrontation and articulated the necessary course of action, which his government failed to undertake until it was too late. Harvard’s Graham Allison compares the Crowe Memorandum to the writings of Thucydides, whose History of the Peloponnesian War identified the dilemma that a dominant power faces when it must either accede to the rise of a challenger or risk eventual war with it. The other school of thought argues that Crowe delivered only self-fulfilling prophecies by helping to institutionalize an attitude of anti-German animus. One prominent German historian even dubbed Crowe the “evil spirit of the Foreign Office.” With these two schools of thought forming in play, the bulk of the literature on Crowe has accordingly sought to determine the precise extent and manner of his influence on British-German relations both before and after the First World War.

War By Other Means: An Examination of Clausewitz and Modern Terrorism

Eric Fleury

July 01, 2021

Clausewitz can help us to think about the historical evolution and present character of terrorism. A handful of scholars, notably M.L.R. Smith and Peter Neumann, have applied Clausewitzian ideas to terrorist campaigns. They show how his foundational idea of the “trinity”—composed of popular passion, military strategy, and political objectives—describes a terrorist cell just as readily as a conventional army or guerrilla outfit. As they describe it, terrorism is one option among many in the complex strategic environment of a decidedly weaker force struggling to “maximize its advantage vis-a-vis an opponent.” Here, Eric Fleury argues that terrorism is not merely one example of modern warfare among many that exhibits the continuing relevance of Clausewitz, but rather occupies a more fundamental role within his theory.

Jimmy Carter, Commencement Address at Notre Dame University (May 1977)

Joshua Boucher

December 16, 2015

In May 1977, the still comparably new-to-the-Presidency Jimmy Carter made his way to Notre Dame to give that spring’s commencement address. He used the opportunity presented to him to chart before the new graduates and the American people as a whole his plan for the foreign policy of the United States during his presidency and well beyond. The speech is best remembered for Carter’s assertion that his administration would be free of the “inordinate fear of communism” that had too long distorted American foreign policy.

U.S. Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual (1940)

A. Bradley Potter

September 22, 2015

The American military and the U.S. Marine Corps in particular had been fighting and analyzing counterinsurgency operations decades before their boots marked the sands of the Middle East and South Asia. Sadly, many of the lessons from these experiences languished on the shelfs of war colleges even as they became vitally important in the field. A handful of forward thinking officers cried for their reconsideration and modernization, and these efforts ultimately led to The U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual No. 3-24. However, long before General David Petraeus blended the wisdom of soldiers and scholars to produce his manual, an earlier effort already chronicled many of the central considerations for fighting against insurgencies. The Marine Corps Small Wars Manual, published in 1936 and updated in 1940, remains an important document for understanding the historical development of American counterinsurgency strategy and tactics.

Polk, War Message to Congress (1846)

Joshua Boucher

July 03, 2015

Although he was not the first to put his eyes on the territory west of the Louisiana Purchase, it was the presidency of James K. Polk (1845-1849) that put the finishing touches on the last major acquisition of new territory before the Civil War. A member of the Jacksonian-nationalist wing of the Democratic Party, Polk’s intentions were clear from the start—his famous campaign slogan, “54-40 or Fight!” indicated his intention to settle the status of the Oregon Territory with Great Britain on American terms. But even more famously associated with Polk is the Mexican-American War, and with it the acquisition of New Mexico and Upper California.

Madison’s Examination of the British Doctrine

Patrick J. Garrity +

June 15, 2015

We cite Madison’s Examination as a classic of American strategy and diplomacy because it set the stage for one of the last, and in the end unsuccessful, efforts of the Jeffersonian Republicans to realize one of the principal goals of the Revolution in international affairs. The Founders – including Adams’ father – had hoped that entrance of the United States into the Euro-Atlantic state system would bring about a new configuration of international power, one favorable to liberty and reformist domestic politics. This more peaceful and republican world would be underwritten by norms of international behavior that followed an increasingly liberal law of nations.

Edward Mead Earle’s Critique of Spykman

Patrick J. Garrity +

April 09, 2015

Earle wrote a surprisingly negative review in the Political Science Quarterly (March 1943) of Nicholas Spykman's America's Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (1942), which is generally considered to have been highly influential among the set of individuals who composed Makers of Modern Strategy. Earle "found Spykman's focus on a narrow concept of power as the sole basis of international affairs unpersuasive and out of line with American traditions.